Keith Widaman, a distinguished professor in the Graduate School of Education, has been awarded the 2019 Samuel J. Messick Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from Division 5 of the American Psychological Association. The award is presented annually to honor an individual who has a long and distinguished history of scientific contributions within the field of quantitative research methods.

Widaman is a developmental psychologist whose research interests include the growth and development of adaptive behaviors across the lifespan and family influences on the development of children and adolescents with and without intellectual disabilities.

His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, and he is a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. 

“The Messick Award is quite gratifying to me,” Widaman said. “As academic researchers, we often keep our heads down, noses to the grindstone, so to speak, toiling to understand human behavior and to mentor the next generation of research scholars and teachers. Every once in a while, we take a break to look over what we have accomplished, and an award of this form provides an occasion to engage in such an evaluation.”

Widaman said he was especially humbled to be in the company of previous award winners, including 2011 recipient Robert MacCallum, an Ohio State University professor who taught Widaman during his graduate studies, and Robert Rosenthal, a faculty colleague in UCR’s Department of Psychology who won the award in 2002. 

“Very gratifying and satisfying to win an award of this sort — now back to work!” Widaman added.

Samuel J. Messick was a psychologist who spent much of his career at the nonprofit Educational Testing Service, a role that saw him make a substantial impact on the interpretation of scores from high-stakes tests used in educational settings across the US. In return, the Educational Testing Service endowed the American Psychological Association award in Messick’s honor. Widaman will receive it during the associaton’s annual convention, held this year in Chicago from Aug. 8-11.